Construction Driven Language Processing

May 2007

Jerry T. BallSenior Research PsychologistAir Force Research Laboratory

Mesa, AZ

Conceptual Ontology

• Object– anything construed as distinct from everything else

• Relation– property or attribute of a single object, relation or

situation, or relationship between more than one objects, relations or situations

• Situation– action, state, process, location, direction, path, time,

manner or other relation, including the participants in the relation

Grammatical Functions

• Referring Expression– Specifier– Head

• Relational Expression– Relational Head– Complements

• Subject• Direct Object• Indirect Object• Relational Complement

• Modifier• Coordinator• Part of Speech

– Relational• Verb, Adjective, Preposition, Adverb, Coordinator

– Objective• Noun, Pronoun, Proper Noun

– Functional• Determiner, Auxiliary Verb, Modal Verb

Referring Expressions• Head

– word or expression describing the type of object, relation or situation that the larger expression as a whole refers to

• Specifier– referential marker of a referring expression which

determines the type of referring expression

• Referring Expression (RE)– expression that functions to refer to an object,

relation or situation

• Reference Point (RefPt)– a complement that ties a referring expression to a

described object, relation or situation via reference to an associated object, relation or situation

Specifier Head

Referring Expression(of relational type head)

Object Specifier Head

Object Referring Expression (of relational type head)

Predicate Specifier Head

Predicate Referring Expression (of relational type head)

the book is happy

[ Spec Head ] RE

[ thespec bookhead ] ORE [ isspec happyhead ] PRE

Head

Referring Expression(of relational type head)

RefPt-Specifier Head

Object Referring Expression (of relational type head)

John’s book

Specifier

RefPt-Specifier Head

Situation Referring Expression (of relational type head)

I’m hungry

[ John’srefpt-spec bookhead ] ORE [ I’mrefpt-spec hungryhead ] SRE

[ RefPt Spec Head ] RE

RefPt

• Relational Expression (RelExpr)– expression with one or more complements that is

headed by a word or expression describing a relation

• Relational Head (RelHead)• Complement (Comp)

– referring expression that is a participant in a relational expression

Relational Expressions

RelHead Comps(0..3)

Relational Expression

Compsubj

[Compsubj RelHead … ] RelExpr

Compsubj RelHead

Relational Expression

John smiled

[ Johnsubj smiledrelhead ] RelExpr

Compsubj RelHead

Relational Expression

he likes

[ hesubj likesrelhead youobj] RelExpr

you

Compobj

• Modifier (Mod)– word or expression that constrains the meaning

of the word or expression it modifies without changing the grammatical function (GF) of the word or expression

• Coordinator (Coord)– word or expression that combines two or more

parts of speech or grammatical functions of the same type, with the resulting expression retaining the grammatical function of the conjuncts

GFi Mod

GFi

GFiMod

GFi

Conj GFi

GFi

GF(0..n)i

Head Mod

Head

red book

RelHead Mod

RelHead

fast run

Coord Head

Head

apples and

Head

oranges

[ appleshead andcoord orangeshead] head

[ redmod bookhead] head [ runhead fastmod] relhead

Construction Driven Language Processing

• Words and expressions in linguistic input activate constructions

• Some subset of activated constructions is selected for subsequent processing

• Selected constructions are integrated into an evolving representation

Basic Process:Construction Activation, Selection and Integration

He is kicking the ball

Construction Activation

• he [ he ] PRON

• he [ heSPEC-HEAD ] ORE

• is [ is ] AUX-VERB

• he is [ REF-PTCOMP beSPEC PREDICATIONHEAD ] SRE

• kicking [ kicking ] VERB

• kicking [ SUBJCOMP kickHEAD OBJCOMP ] RELEXPR

• is kicking [ beSPEC V-ingHEAD ] PREDICATOR

• the [ the ] DET

• the [ theSPEC HEAD ] ORE

• ball [ ball ] NOUN

• the ball [ theSPEC ballHEAD ] ORE

• kicking the ball [ VHEAD OBJCOMP ] PREDICATION

Construction Selection

• In the simplest case all activated constructions may be selected for integration

• Competing constructions may result in one construction being preferred

• Depth of processing (e.g. skimming vs. reading for full understanding) may affect construction selection and integration process

• Assume simplest case in examples that follow…

He

Construction Integration

he

ORE

[he ]spec-head

He is SRE

he is

[is]aux-verb

[ref-ptcomp bespec predicationhead]

ORE

[he ]spec-head

He is kicking SRE

he kicking is

[is]aux-verb

[ref-ptcomp bespec predicationhead]

[bespec V-inghead]ORE

PREDICATOR

[he ]spec-head [kicking]verb

PREDICATION

[kickhead objcomp]

He is kicking the SRE

he is

[is ]aux-verb

[ref-ptcomp bespec predicationhead]

[bespec V-inghead]

ORE

PREDICATOR

[he ]spec-head

the

ORE

[thespec head]

kicking

[kicking]verb

PREDICATION

[kickhead objcomp]

SRE

he kicking the ball is

[is]aux-verb

[ref-ptcomp bespec predicationhead]

[bespec V-inghead]

ORE ORE

PREDICATOR

[he ]spec-head [thespec ballhead][kicking]verb

[vhead objcomp]

PREDN

He is kicking the ball

• Serial processing without backtracking!• If current input is unexpected given the prior

context, then accommodate the input• Related to Lewis’ “Limited Repair Parsing”,

but accommodation is “part and parcel” of the processing mechanism

• The following example is from the Computational Cognitive Model which is under development– “no airspeed or altitude restrictions”

• Tree structures were automatically generated from model output using phpSyntaxTree (Eisenbach & Eisenbach)

Context Accommodation

No airspeed

No airspeed or altitude

No airspeed or altitude restrictions